In this 2nd centenary year of Charles Dickens, it is shameful that his biographer Claire Tomalin did not have the courage to even mention Frederick Hervey Foster Quin even once (!) in her much lauded biography – can you imagine if she had left out any black characters or the ‘slavey’ he ‘obtained’ from the workhouse to live an awful existence downstairs doing all the dirty kitchen work and what else?? Such is the prejudice against homeopathy today! Shameful!! (Claire Tomalin, Charles Dickens: A Life, (Penguin Group US, 27 Oct 2011).

Quin dined with Queen Victoria (unfortunately ebay does not provide a date for this dinner invitation ?possibly 1870s? http://www.ebay.com/itm/FREDERIC-HERVEY-FOSTER-QUIN-AUTOGRAPH-LETTER-SIGNED-/370660800376?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item564d1af778 ): ‘… The father of British homeopathic medicine accepts an invitation to dine with Queen Victoria. Autograph Letter signed: “F. H. F. Quin”, 4 pages (integral leaf), 4×6. Molgsare Mansion, n.d. (“Friday”. To “Dear Miss Taylor”, in full: “I shall be charmed to have the honor of dining at St James Palace tomorrow Saturday and present my dutiful respects to Her Royal Highness, and have the honor of meeting the Duke ‘en partie guarée’. Many many thanks for your kind & thoughtful hints about there being no stairs to mount. This horrid cold weather has crippled me in the ‘bud’, don’t laugh, I allude to the ‘bud’ of my second childhood which is hastening on, only my brain instead hardening with the ice as I fear softening. I am nevertheless yours very faithfully”. Frederick Hervey Foster Quin (1799-1879) was the foremost British advocate of homeopathic medicine. After study and travel on the Continent and service as personal physician to Prince Leopold, future King of Belgium and uncle of Queen Victoria, Quin set up practice in London in 1828. He founded the British Homeopathic Society (1844) and the London Homeopathic Hospital. The well connected Quin was a frequent guest at elite social gatherings like this one, using his charm to raise funds for his hospital and other projects and to popularize his alternative medical system. Then, as now, homeopathic medicine was controversial, and the dinner invitation at the palace must have been quite interesting if Queen Victoria’s personal physician, Sir John Forbes, was also present. Forbes, reflecting the view of the medical establishment, deemed homeopathy “an outrage to human reason.” Lightly toned and creased. Multiple mailing folds. Minor ink smears throughout letter (legible). Otherwise, fine condition…’

His reputation greatly enhanced, Quin published a paper on cholera, and his friends pursuade him to return to London, which he does in 1832. settling at 19 King Street St James‘s. His practice flourished, which caused uproar in the Royal College of Surgeons. Quin calmly ignored them and continued his work.

The fact that many of the German relatives of the British Royal family were also devoted patrons of homeopathy, including Queen Adelaide, wife of King William IV, also assisted its rapid social acceptance in Britain.

Here is a small anecdote, related to Frederick Hervey Foster Quin. When Dr. John Ayrton Paris (1785-1856), then President of the Royal College of Physicians, noted seeing Frederick Hervey Foster Quin’s name in the list of candidates to the Athenaeum Club in London, he remarked that they had come to a sorry state if ‘quacks and adventurers’ were to be proposed as members.

In 1843, Quin founded the British Homeopathic Society to replace the Hahnemannian Society which he had tried to bring to life in 1837. Frederick Hervey Foster Quin was the first President of the British Homeopathic Society. Thus followed blast and counterblast between homeopaths and allopaths which ultimately gave birth to homeopathy in Britain. John Franklin Gray wrote from America to offer advice.

‘Quin was able to obtain an amendment to the Medical Registration Bill; a clause was added enabling the Privy Council to withdraw the right to award degrees from any university that tried to impose the type of medicine practised by its graduates.’

The 1858 Medical Act established for the first time the professional status and legal regulation of formally qualified medical practitioners, as distinct from quacks, and still regulates the practice of medicine in the UK today. The law was specifically designed to outlaw quackery, which was rife at that time, by establishing a Register of approved practitioners. Initially these guidelines were interpreted very strictly, confining those on the Register only to holders of UK medical degrees, licenses and diplomas.

Even the holders of Continental medical degrees and diplomas were excluded from the Medical Register, for fear of encouraging deviant forms of medical practice in Britain, ie. quackery. In more recent times these rules were relaxed, even allowing American medical graduates the right to practice, whose degrees had previously been scorned as worthless pieces of paper.

All foreign graduates must still apply directly to the General Medical Council to be granted permission to practise medicine in Britain.

For a detailed introduction to the historical background of Quin’s London, and a comprehensive explanation of the benefits of a hospital appointment, and of a full medical qualification and the crucial structure of graduate and postgraduate supervision leading to success, Felix von Reiswitz‘s paper The ‘Globulisation’ of the Hospital Ward is most instructive.

Felix von Reiswitz explains that Quin laid down Law 47, which Quin called the ‘fundamental law’, which stipulated that only members of the British Homeopathic Society (ie: fully qualified medical physicians) could become eligible for positions in the new homeopathic hospital. This is the flashpoint that may have separated Quin from his Vice President John Chapman, and ?led to his taking a different route into the publishing trade.

From Arlington Street he moved to Mount Street, where his health began to fail, and compelled him to retire to a considerable extent; so that from the time he left Mount Street he never laid himself out for practice, albeit he continued to see those patients who would consult no one but himself, seeing such an one but a few days before his last illness.

On leaving Mount Street, Granville Leveson Gower 1st Earl Granville, who entertained the warmest friendship and admiration for Frederick Hervey Foster Quin, invited him to live at his lordship’s house in Brunton Street; after residing there a short time, and during a very severe illness, he removed to Belgrave Mansions; here he remained till his lease expired. While looking for other quarters, Alfred Duke of Edinburgh, then abroad, wrote to him, begging him to occupy apartments at Clarence House.

The Duke of Sutherland made a similar offer of Stafford House for his use; he accepted the gracious offer of Alfred Duke of Edinburgh, and resided at Clarence House till the Duke and Duchess returned to town, when, although pressed to remain, he took a suit of rooms in Queen Anne’s Mansions, where he died at the advanced age of seventy nine.

3 thoughts on “Frederick Hervey Foster Quin 1799 – 1879”

Sue,
Your work is always a real pleasure to read.
Please note that you have referenced an oft-repeated assertion that Dr. Quin was asked to come to France to treat Napoleon I. Whether it is true or not, it is important to note that this request came BEFORE Quin began to study or practice homeopathy (Napoleon died in 1821!).

When I was lecturing in Naples in the 1980s, I met with homoeopaths who reminded me that Quin was introduced to homoeopahty in Naples. he was on the Grand Tour, met with Dr Necker . Whe he took ill he was treated in the Trinity Hospital with homoeopathy and this was his first experience. He later returned to England and set up practice with an Italian doctor, Guiseppe Belluomini. a partenership that lasted some 12 years.